The 2010s have been a roller coaster in the movement toward securing civil rights, health, and safety for the full LGBTQ+ community. A number of landmark advancements have been undeniable, from the state department allowing gender-marker changes to U.S. passports in 2010 to the Supreme Court ruling on marriage equality in 2015. But so has the ensuing backlash — and widespread recognition that investing in the priorities of our community’s more privileged came at the expense of focusing on its most vulnerable.
Violent hate crimes, particularly against trans women of color, have been on the rise. PrEP has marked a major breakthrough in the battle against HIV, but new infections among Black and Latinx folks continue at alarming rates. Incarceration rates among the queer community remain three times higher than the general population. At the same time, technology and social media have radically impacted the nature of activism, facilitating communication, resource sharing, and mobilizing a new generation to join the fray.
We asked leaders across five organizations working to protect and improve the livelihood of LGBTQ+ people to reflect on the decade in activism and look down the road ahead. From urgent shifts in priorities to an emphasis on amplifying the most marginalized voices, they are clear-eyed about what they hope to see in 2020 and beyond.
What were some of the primary challenges faced by the LGBTQ+ community in the 2010s and strategies employed to address them?
Beverly Tillery, Executive Director of the New York City Anti-Violence Project (AVP)
AVP is an organization that works to address and end all forms of violence through organizing and education and supports survivors through counseling and advocacy.
Over the last 10 years, AVP has been very intentional about including people of color, trans folks, immigrant folks — those who we know consistently are experiencing violence at disproportionate rates — in all aspects of our work. We've been expanding our organizing presence and trying to think strategically about, how do we not just address the immediate violence that people are experiencing, but the systemic oppression at the root of it, and explicitly racism, transphobia and homophobia? Economic empowerment and providing access to jobs and secure and safe places to live, education — all of those things can actually impact the way people experience safety in our communities.
Dominique Morgan, Executive Director of Black and Pink, Inc.
Black and Pink's mission is to abolish the criminal punishment system and to liberate LGBTQIA2S+ people and people living with HIV who are affected by that system, through advocacy, support, and organizing.
One of the largest challenges for LGBTQ+ folks in mass incarceration has been the Prison Rape Elimination Act, which was supposed to build in a safety net for folks being sexually assaulted and victimized inside of the institution. But we’ve seen this policy being implemented locally in ways that do more harm to folks who identify on the LGBTQ+ spectrum than help, like placing them in solitary confinement. [We work to] educate folks, because the more you know about the rule, the more you can wield in a way that is protective towards you or hold the system accountable.
Black & Pink has developed an incubator system, where we go from bailout to housing assistance to education and employment services. When we can partner all of that together in a way that's based in the choice and the will of those that we serve, recidivism rates drop, the success of the programming is amplified, and the quality of life for people who participate grows as well. It's about community after release.
Maxx Boykin, Black AIDS Institute Policy and Organizing Manager
The Black AIDS Institute (BAI) is the only national HIV/AIDS think tank focused exclusively on Black people. The Institute’s mission is to stop the AIDS epidemic in Black communities by engaging and mobilizing Black leaders, institutions, and individuals, in efforts to confront HIV.
There are many different ways in which HIV still impacts Black and brown folks to a higher degree. HIV stigma, which is coupled with stigma of being a person of color, LGBTQ, or someone who was formerly incarcerated. Black and Latinx folks have disproportionately higher uninsured rates and lower access to health care. HIV criminalization laws created in the ‘90s were supposed to help the epidemic but have actually just led to more, specifically, Black people being locked up for longer sentences.
Part of our work in the last 10 years has been making sure organizations that are serving Black folks are doing it in a culturally humble way. We’re thinking about those communities that are most impacted by HIV, be it a formerly incarcerated being, people of trans experience, Black gay and bisexual men, Black women, and also understanding that there are more people that are identifying as queer and don't fit into a particular box and, how do we also make sure that everyone understands how to best give the adequate services for those folks?
Chase Strangio, Deputy Director for Transgender Justice with the ACLU’s LGBT & HIV Project
The ACLU’s mission remains realizing the promise of the Bill of Rights for all and expanding the reach of its guarantees.
I think it's impossible to not name a lot of the really positive changes that have occurred across lawmaking and every branch of government over the last 10 years. The first half of the decade you have a mainstream movement investment in marriage, culminating with marriage equality from the Supreme Court in 2015. After that, you can see the consequences of a lack of resource investment in trans work, in racial and economic justice work, in redistributive work. The widespread introduction of anti-trans bills across the states, and obviously the Trump election in 2016, was a substantial backlash, targeting specifically the trans community at the federal level.
But you can actually see quite a bit of substantial positive change. We end the decade with more states that allow for self-attestation, for updating IDs, well as the addition of non-binary gender markers. We're seeing huge increases in access to health care for trans people, in the context of a system where nobody's getting the care that they need or should have. We were able, over the course of the decade, to fight off a super majority of anti-trans bills in state legislature. There was a relatively substantial change in the conversation between 2010 and 2020 around the centrality of certain types of law reform within the LGBTQ community. Things like decriminalizing sex work, decriminalizing HIV, and ending cash bail have become LGBTQ priorities.
How have advancements in the 2010s, including technology and social media, impacted the LGBTQ+ community and rights movement?
Micky B, National Organizer with Transgender Law Center
Transgender Law Center (TLC) is the largest national trans-led organization advocating for a world in which all people are free to define themselves and their futures. Grounded in legal expertise and committed to racial justice, TLC employs a variety of community-driven strategies to keep transgender and gender nonconforming people alive, thriving, and fighting for liberation.
The internet became a tool for a lot of folks who exist outside of the gender binary, or who have a host of different lived experiences, to be able to connect with one another and talk about what's going on in their lives. The good, the bad, the ugly, everything. And I think that type of visibility also allowed a different level of political education to occur.
People are really using digital organizing in creative ways, and I think that has also allowed a huge shift in our movement building. It changed the way that we communicate ideas, and it shifted power a little bit more towards Black trans people being able to name our issues and organize around those most important to us.
Beverly Tillery
People are paying attention in ways that they haven't paid attention before. We've seen people in this decade flooding the streets, we saw it here this summer when we were responding to the death of Layleen Polanco who died at Rikers. Not only were people getting active through their phones and social media, but people actually turned out. A lot of that work that we did to get people to come out was through social media.
Dominique Morgan
Technology and social media helped remove the barrier of stigma of being system-impacted. I was released February of 2009, and it was something I had to be okay with hiding. With social media, the ability to build solidarity, to share stories and amplify voices changed everything. The Black Lives Matter movement happened because of the social media age.
The ability to use technology to express when there's an emergency, to get access to funds, or just to check on your loved ones, has changed how we can hold the system accountable. We really underestimate the value of communication on how we can affirm that [people who are incarcerated] matter. Reintegration and folding our folks back in the community has also become far easier with technology.
Maxx Boykin
The CDC [affirming that “undetectable equals untransmittable”] has been a huge game changer. PrEP is an excellent tool to help us fight the HIV epidemic, but there are clear reasons why it is not having a huge uptake within the Black community. As a Black person who takes PrEP myself, I understand people not trusting it or not feeling that it was marketed to us. The pricing of it leaves a lot of Black folks without access. And when other social determinants of health are not being addressed [like food and housing], it’s hard to just tell someone to take medicine. In order for us to end the HIV epidemic, everyone needs to have access to affordable care.
What are some of the biggest challenges ahead and how do you hope the movement will strategically evolve to address them?
Micky B
I'm hoping in the next decade we see a federally supported helpline for trans people experiencing harm, that could also help intervene on the violence against Black trans women that happens interpersonally. I also really hope folks take on solutions that come from and are led by Black trans people. You can't go wrong if you trust Black trans women. We know what we're up against.
I’m hoping that we figure out ways to resource our movement-building [with an emphasis on] grassroots. We also have to do better at naming how our issues intersect with one another. I know that as a Black trans woman living in the South, I have to be allied with anybody who is an immigrant to this country, anyone who is a former or current sex worker, anyone who has been incarcerated. We would better be able to turn the tide if we band together.
Beverly Tillery
We’re hoping that there will be much more conversation about preventing violence, that we're not just chasing homicides and honoring people who pass. I think no matter who gets elected next, our community of people who care about progressive values and respect marginalized people is still going to have to organize and be as strong as ever to fight what has already been unleashed. We have to continue to get back to basics and do that organizing on the street.
Dominique Morgan
Right now, funding is geared toward keeping the status quo. In a decade, I'm hoping that we're going to be funded to create transformative movements. I think you're going to see more [leaders] who are system-impacted who will really understand intersectional oppression. We're really going to have to be comfortable with addressing racism and white supremacy and anti-blackness and homophobia and transphobia in a clear way and figure out how we continue to build community. We're not going to see this type of community in a decade, in 20 years, in 50 years, until it's a nonnegotiable that everyone has access to the best lived experience that they desire.
Maxx Boykin
We have all of the science needed to help end HIV today even without a vaccine. But where we are coming up short is in understanding the social determinants of health. And until we have comprehensive, gender-affirming sex education across this country, we will continue to see young people die from HIV. If we don't actually tackle it as an intersectional issue, we will not end the epidemic. In February, The Black AIDS Institute’s response [to the Trump administration's “Ending the HIV Epidemic”] will address racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and spell out clear guidelines on what has to be done for us to talk about truly ending HIV.
Chase Strangio
In the next 10 years I think ultimately we're going to have to invest in state and local work and have more affirmative demands in those contexts. Ultimately, we can't expect the Supreme Court to do justice by our full community. We have to be prepared to respond to decisions, no matter how they come out, and continue to not let negative outcomes stop our momentum. The LGBT movement, and the trans movement in particular, has a long history of collective caretaking and sharing resources. Whether that's through creating shelters, creating ride sharing programs, creating food sharing, we still continue to have the ability to pool our resources outside of government regulated programs.
I think holding powerful institutions accountable has to be the theme of our next decade, whether those institutions are companies, our government, our workplaces, or just the norms that we have become accustomed to. There's a lot of work to be done. We're just going to have to be more creative in our strategies — it's not an option to give up.
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